Godly Love

A Rose Planted in the Desert of Our Hearts

Stephen G. Post

• Publisher: Templeton Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781599471518
• eBook ISBN: 9781599471938
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

In this uplifting new book, author Stephen G. Post explores the mysteries and the wonder of Godly love. This all-important love is personal, unconditional, unlimited, generative, and omnipresent. The title alludes to Isaiah 35, how Godly love is said to plant a rose in our hearts precisely when we feel like a desert with no more love to give.

Post draws on his life experiences and works at the Institute for Research on Unlimited Love as he intersperses personal anecdotes with spiritual truths and research on human happiness. In the process, he defines the concept of Godly love and illustrates how important it can be in our lives—not only emotionally and spiritually but physically as well. "Godly love," he writes, "is the only foundation in the universe that we can really lean on."

We all have deserts in life, so we all need Godly love. Without it, the downward slide to cynicism, hostility, and cool indifference can be too easy. These meditations on the subject will nurture our confidence in the power of a love greater than our own when we need it most.

1. GODLY LOVE AND HUMAN HATREDS

IN MARCH 2007 I had the honor of spending several days north of Paris with the great Jean Vanier, then in his early eighties. Jean had founded L’Arche (“The Ark”) some four decades earlier, when he was inspired by an experience of Godly love to invite two men with cognitive developmental disabilities into his home. Over the years, L’Arche homes have flourished worldwide as volunteers dwell with the disabled in communities of faith, prayer, and Godly love. I had attended meals in L’Arche homes in Cleveland on a number of occasions, and I had heard the grace said before eating, the hymns sung, and the energy of love that was palpable in the lives of those caregivers and in the experience of those they cared for and lived with.

---

The ignorant say Love and God are different;
none know that Love and God are the same.
When they know that Love and God are
the same, they rest in God’s love.

—TIRU-MULAR, HINDU BHAKTI POET

Men are not flattered by being shown that
there has been a difference of purpose
between the Almighty and them.

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN

---

Jean struck me as one of the most loving, Godly, and humble men I had ever met. He spoke quietly and brilliantly, and he exuded an infectious sense of fun. On one Sunday evening there was a Catholic Mass in an old renovated chapel from the fourteenth century. About one hundred people had gathered there, mostly L’Arche volunteers and people with disabilities. I saw a volunteer wheel one older man named David up to the priest for communion. That night, at dinner, I asked Jean what he thought David had gotten from receiving communion, for David was probably the most severely disabled and agitated person I had encountered there. Jean said, “Whenever David receives communion, he becomes more peaceful, and that is the power of God’s love. Remember, Stephen, we do not know much about the mystery of God’s love and presence.” Jean’s pure, enduring, and expansive love clearly encompassed such a severely disabled man, and counted him among God’s blessed.

EVIL IN GOD’S NAME

When I encounter a man like Jean Vanier, I feel that we must all stop thinking of God as the epitome of awesome power and strength in the conventional sense. This convention may be partly true, but we need to set it aside; otherwise, we begin to think of God primarily in terms of might, and human arrogance propels us into thinking that because my God is stronger than your God, violence is justified in God’s name. If we think about God in terms of power, then religions become tainted with human arrogance. Far too many prayerful people are carrying rifles in the spirit of pure hatred and pretending that their hatred is somehow divinely sanctioned. This amounts to shallow religiosity, which only causes pain and undermines Godly love. The Lord of power and might is first and foremost the author and giver of all good things, the Divine Entity who nourishes us in love and brings forth from us good works.

We need to stop thinking that our definitions of God are complete and that our knowledge of God’s will is total. Our definitions, even if divinely inspired, are still products of the human mind, and we can never fully understand the Divine. Religious doctrines, if adhered to arrogantly, tend to separate us from one another and shatter the unifying spirit of Godly love that all spirituality seeks to cultivate. When religions place doctrine and force above love, they foment massive evil—from torture to terror, from coercion to conflict. Religious wars exemplify human tribalism and arrogance, both of which bring out the worst in us.

---

Peace in the celestial city is the perfectly
ordered, perfectly harmonious fellowship
of those who enjoy God and enjoy
one another in God.

—AUGUSTINE

The man who foolishly does me wrong,
I will return to him the protection
of my ungrudging love.

—BUDDHA

---

Hatred, hostility, and revenge are such strong emotions that they can crush our fragile sense of Godly love. The pseudospirituality of hatred runs counter to all genuine spirituality, which is always an adventure in love, an expression of love’s deepest desires.

COUNTERING HATRED WITH GODLY LOVE

The love of power can sometimes overwhelm the power of love, so we must remain humble and guard against this. No matter how little we know about God, we can still experience Godly love. Only by taking Godly love much more seriously than we do now—even inculcating a profound love for one another among ancient, sworn enemies—can we expect to head off a spiral of widespread destruction.

Most of religion and spirituality is rooted in healing emotions, grounded in love. We will never achieve sustained peace in the twenty-first century unless all religions live up to those intrinsic ideals of Godly love, applying those ideals to all of humankind without exception.

The world shows no signs of becoming any less religious; we as humans will always have a passion for Ultimate Truth that provides safe haven and emotional security in times of distress. Yet we will only have a human future if we infuse universal Godly love into the rituals that religions create, and express through our actions spiritual emotions such as forgiveness and compassion. If our religions fail to promote universal Godly love, violence will sweep us all away.

PROMOTING HARMONY AND PEACE

Godly love alone can realign the world in harmony and peace. Too many kill in God’s name, claiming that they alone know the destiny God intends for humankind. Our limited human knowledge of any divinely inspired destiny to be played out on the human stage belies this specious—and dangerous—claim.

Love is the source of our greatest happiness and security; therefore love is the Ultimate Good, the Supreme Good. Nothing else comes close, for love underlies the creative energy that propels us from birth to death. The withholding of love drives to destruction those deprived of love’s nurturing, its compassion, and its life-giving blessings. This occurs most notably in critical developmental periods during childhood. And it holds just as true for a child in a nursery as it does for an older adult in a hospice.

---

It is this recognition of the law of love as the
highest law of human life, and the clearly
expressed guidance for conduct that follows
from the Christian teaching on love, applied
equally to enemies and those who hate,
offend and curse us, that constitutes the
peculiarity of Christ’s teaching.

—LEO TOLSTOY, THE LAW OF LOVE
AND THE LAW OF VIOLENCE

---

Our religions, which offer models of righteous living, must put into practice their visions of Godly love, or they fail us all.

Trusting in Him, who can go with me,
and remain with you and be everywhere
for good, let us confidently hope
that all will yet be well.
To His care commending you, as I hope
in your prayers you will commend me,
I bid you an affectionate farewell.

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN, FAREWELL ADDRESS AT SPRINGFIELD, ILLINOIS

2. GODLY LOVE IS…

IN AUGUST 2005 I was at the Chautauqua Institution in New York state, presenting a week of lectures on the interface among science, theology, and Godly love. My cell phone rang. It was the producer for Michael Feldman’s NPR show Whad’Ya Know?, inviting me to be Michael’s special guest in the Palace Theatre in downtown Cleveland on September 17, a Saturday morning. Michael was curious, he said, about my Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. I said yes, but without knowing anything about the show. In early September I decided to listen to Whad’Ya Know? and realized that Michael can be a little cutesy and mischievous. So on the evening of September 16 I went for one of my quiet Godly love walks along Ohio’s Chagrin River, and I asked, “Lord, what is Michael Feldman going to ask me?” Well, it came to me that Michael would ask me something like, “Now, Dr. Post, Unlimited Love? What kind of love are we talking about here?” So I thought through an answer after making a call to my good friend William Grassie.

The next morning, sitting on the stage with four thousand people in the studio audience and millions listening in, Michael introduced me and asked, “Now, Dr. Post, what kind of love are we talking about here?” And I had an answer ready: “Michael, it’s the kind of love that gets people down to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, the kind of love that makes our otherwise merel...

Table of contents

• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 - Godly Love and Human Hatreds
• Chapter 2 - Godly Love is…
• Chapter 3 - Our Human Significance
• Chapter 4 - The Greatest Spiritual Emotion
• Chapter 5 - Five Dimensions of Godly Love
• Chapter 6 - Godly Love Holism
• Chapter 7 - Godly Love and Happiness
• Chapter 8 - The Wheel of Love—Ten Ways
• Chapter 9 - Self-Sacrifice
• Chapter 10 - A Useful Exercise—Godly Love Prayer, Visualization, and Action